Thursday, May 26, 2005

Sketch Minute: A Gothic Guardian

It's hard being a graphic designer. You THINK you are artistic and creative and all. But after churning out design works that, at most times, you are just not interested to do, or you feel are just plain BLAH all because you HAVE TO -- you eventually lose that creative spark. You sometimes even feel like you've sold out in most projects just so the client would say YES to the layout and pay you already. At this point, i start to go through a season of dryness. Nothing seems to excite me anymore. And the only way for me to keep the fire burning, well, is to keep fanning the flames by coming up with art that doesn't necessarily always have to make sense! For once, i want to do my thing and not have to explain WHY i did it. Which is why i started sketching again.

So to keep myself together, i bought myself 2 new sketchbooks. One that has all my design concepts for specific projects, and another for just...anything i decide i want to do. My most recent sketch is this gargoyle i saw in a magazine. It was interesting, and it was painted all white. I could hardly make out the details. So i challenged myself to make this photo of a gargoyle come alive through my sketch, but i had to do it in 5 minutes or less. No fine-tuning allowed. And this is how it turned out. (see photo post)

At first, i found the drawing to be really creepy since i am not one to draw monsters and grotesque looking creatures. But after i read somewhere that gargoyles are actually believed to chase away evil spirits, i decided that it was all about perspective. Now I'm actually kinda happy with the turn out, and i'm happy i got to release all my tensions for the past hour by pouring my energies into this one project. I'm feeling a little more recharged and possibly more open to starting a new job.

I guess this gothic guardian did it's job well.

I plan to do this more often so stay tuned to my next sketch projects. :)